Spaghetti!

We had a pretty big event here last night. Spaghetti! Kaden has his first helping of spaghetti and (way too) red sauce. And he loved it! He got it everywhere and enjoyed every second of it. Stu promptly took him to the bath after dinner and it took me the whole bath time and then some to get the mess cleaned up! Haha

We finally found some non-ceramic plates and bowls for him here, so he can have messier food in his highchair. So that was fun!

Confession

Yep, that’s right. I have a confession to make. Stu came home this afternoon bearing a package from Marcia. “Yay! Christmas again!” I tell Kaden as I get out the scissors to cut the tape. It has the cutest little jumpers with more characters and stripes and bright colors to add to his nothing-purchased-by-his-own-parents wardrobe. The bottom was loaded with mail which Stu and I gleefully went through saying, “taken care of”, “that one’s done”, etc. It feels so nice to be almost out of debt. It means that when we go home instead of half a month’s worth of paycheck going to car payments and rent and various charge cards, it can go into a savings account. Or become one heck of a Christmas for a baby we couldn’t spoil last year. Anyway, along with the mail and Kaden goodies (including a “Koi toy” floating Koi fish for the bathtub! Cool!) were an assortment of foodstuffs. We got corn meal (!!! Hehe, WHO reads my blogs???), and some mixes for muffins. Well, and here is the confession part, I opened one of these packages after Stu mentioned that we didn’t have muffin pans, dumped it into a bowl, added the half a cup of milk called for in the directions, stirred it up…. And proceeded to eat half of it. Yep. Raw. In all of its yummy goodness. Mom would have smacked me! Hehe.

So needless to say, I hadn’t eaten dinner yet, but now am full. From blueberry muffin mix. Right on.

Onion Rings

It happened again. I was doing great, eating Arabic-inspired or easy-to-find-ingredient foods and doing just fine. Then this morning I have a craving for Wendy's chicken nuggets (with honey mustard sauce, of course!). So I finally ate the other half of my sandwich I got at the Hard Rock in Dubai this past weekend (French dip... soooo good). Instead of satisfying my craving (I assumed eating American food would help) in just reminded me of the AWESOME onion rings that accompanied my sandwich this weekend!




So I set off in search of an onion rings recipe (I think to myself, "They can't be THAT hard to make.") and of course, every recipe either calls for BEER (yeah right) or Cornmeal. Neither of which I have, and after scouring the baking section of LuLu's, I doubt I'm going to find. So one more thing to add to the cravings list.



I also started wanting coffee cake this morning (which I DO have the ingredients for), but I convinced myself I can wait to make that until batch # 2 of the Apple Crisp is devoured.

Can't wait to get home... 42 Days till the Zero Day! :)

Hard Rock Cafe Dubai

Sorry it’s been a few days since I’ve posted… Thursday night we went over to Tony and Stef’s new apartment for grill night. They got the apartment on the top floor (that used to be a common area) so now it is cleaned up and their house looks great. They have it all painted and set up now and it is so much more homey feeling up there now (plus we had somewhere to stick a nap-needing Kaden!) Anyway, so that was fun. I forgot to take any pictures so I don’t have any visuals. Sorry!

In light of the recent terror warnings about staying away from touristy and “western” type places in the UAE, the three of us decided to hit up Hard Rock café in Dubai! Yeah, so much for heeding warnings, eh? But we had a great time. It is retardedly difficult to get to though and we got lost twice (while we could still SEE the building, the one-ways proved to be rather difficult). Kaden loved looking around at all the stuff on the walls. This particular Hard Rock has a car suspended upside down from the ceiling. That was fun. So we got ourselves shirts and drove on home. It was so dusty in Dubai (as it has been in Abu Dhabi these past few weeks) that there were very few photo opportunities.

Kaden's first experience with a balloon... he LOVED it!

Dusty Dubai

Once we came back to Abu Dhabi we hit up a little Souk here and got a marble chess set and marble glasses (more like goblets) for sinfully cheap. So that was cool. Then Stu had some fun with the camera and chess set.

Saturday was mellow, just did some shopping and then grilled some sausages and shrimp for an early dinner and watched Knocked Up again (still funny!).

Visas

We went to Oman again this weekend to get new Visitor's Visas (they are only good for 60 days). This time, I am pleased to announce, was MUCH better than the last adventure we took to Oman. We did not get lost this time and even though it took several hours, it was a fairly pleasurable experience.

Kaden was a very good boy the whole time. He got down while we were filling out forms at the borders and had a great time exploring the backseat. (Disclaimer for Grandparents: No, he was NOT on the floor at any time while the car was in motion)

We ate at the same restaurant in Al Ain that we did last time and it was just as good as I remember.

So now we are good until we go back home on vacation in August as far as our visas are concerned. Which is nice for our peace of mind.

Yesterday we watched “We Were Soldiers” on TV and Daddy took some pics of Kaden and Mommy playing on the floor.

Kaden just learned we have tongues and he was "getting" Mommy's.

He had an itchy face and scrunched it up to sneeze.

Talent... pfffft!

Ok, I am a good cook. I come from a long line of good cooks. Cooking is a passion of mine, and one of my favorite things to do…. So why the *&^% can’t I BAKE??? I am not even kidding. I can perfect a dish I’ve never even tried without following a recipe, just by knowing what ingredients taste good together, and putting my own signature on things. But get me near a cookie or cake and if it doesn’t come out burnt, it will inevitably be too dry or too mushy, or SOMETHING that is just BAD!

Case in freaking point: Yesterday Stu decides he’d like some chocolate chip cookies. Well, since we can’t find anything relating to baking here (baking powder, normal sugar, etc.) we broke down a just bought some packages of the ready-to-bake tubes of cookie dough. You simply preheat the oven, slice them into rounds, put them on the baking sheet (or glass pan for us since we don’t own baking sheets) and put them in the oven for 9-11 minutes. In theory after which time, ta-da, cookies! Well, not when I am responsible for them!

I did all the steps, then after probably 12 minutes (since I always forget they’re in the oven until I actually smell them) I take them out and leave them to cool for that infamous “minute” before removing them to a paper towel. Sigh… here are MY cookies after forgetting them and leaving them for 20 minutes to adhere themselves like cement to the glass pan.

So I ask Stu, “How can I be so good at cooking and suck so bad at such a gay sport as baking?!?!”
He says, watching my elbow-grease-laden effort to de-stick them from the glass, “It’s not a sport… it’s obviously a talent…”

Followed by, “We should have to fly the flag as half-mast for such a travesty…”

I hadn’t laughed so hard in MONTHS! Sighhhh… I’m done with this stupid baking nonsense!

At least they were still edible with a glass of milk!

Typical Thursday

Thursday today: grilled again. It was nice, but it is getting so humid these days. Once the sun goes down it isn’t too bad because you get a pseudo-breeze that passes through occasionally, but during the evening hours beforehand, it’s just plain old hot! I went to open my camera today to snap some pictures up there and it completely fogged over so much that I had to physically wipe it off and it just kept forming droplets on the lens. I had to wait for the camera to warm up and basically become accustomed to the humidity before I could take any pictures.

Rainy and Marcelo made it again tonight. I just love having her around. She came over to hang out yesterday too. Having an American woman here that I can actually connect with, one that I would have chosen to befriend back home, has been such a lifesaver for me.

Then we were supposed to play cards down in our apartment and had J.J. come down too, but everyone was too wrapped up in getting Kaden to walk to actually sit down and play cards. All in all it was a good night.

The roof of the building next door through the fogged-over lens of the camera.

Baby mad at me for making him play outside in the heat.

Being dorks...

Daddy dancing with Kaden.

Kaden thinking, "What the heck are you doing?"

Rainy and I

Post-baby body weight-loss program: Move to the Middle East where they don't have junk food!

He thought this was pretty funny!

Laughing!

Avocados!

Well, we're wrapping up the weekend here. It’s been sort of a lazy weekend. Stu got me an elliptical machine this weekend! It’s too hot to go outside anymore. Seriously, we went out today and poor little Kaden started crying after the first store we went to because it is so hot and he just sweats, even after the A/C has been on forever in the car. In that car-seat the air just doesn’t circulate all that well and he has to be miserable. So I don’t think we’ll be going out much anymore during the day if he has to be in that seat for too long.



BUT, a positive side of going out today was that I got to go to Spinney’s for the first time today and we got AVOCADOS! Hooray for life! So I am going to make guacamole tonight and then put avocado on everything I eat until I am sick of them. We also got some pork, yay. We got bacon and ham which I am really excited about because we can put it on Pizza! We got like ten things total at Spinney’s and it was almost 50 bucks… just goes to show how inflated the price of pork is over here.

Then we went grocery shopping at LuLu’s since it is the cheap place. They have most everything, even if you have to get a weird brand, but as far as produce goes, it’s normally rotting or pretty close to it. Luckily it was a good day for potatoes (they’ve been a total miss the past three weeks) which is awesome because I planned to have baked potatoes this week! It’s nice when things work out like that (it’s the little things in life anymore, heh).

We grilled out on the roof again this week. We did burgers this time though and they were fabulous! Stu is the best hamburger maker on the planet. He even found some really yummy buns that were fresh (so not rock-hard) and we had all the fixin’s. So good. Here are some pictures of us up there this week!

He sure is a good looking guy!

Happy singing baby.

Mommy.

Laid-back baby just hanging out.

Mommy and baby having a great time!

Soup

So I think of Brett, my old boss, nearly every single day at noon. Brett used to get soup for lunch almost every day and now, for whatever reason, I am obsessed with my lunch soup! Soup here is not like soup back home. It comes in little packets and you have to add water (even for tomato… weird huh?). So none of the soup tastes all that familiar, but I’ve grown quite fond of this Arabic version of watery “cream of chicken soup”. Today is no different. It’s just me, Kaden, and a couple “Ritz” crackers enjoying my soup!

Stock.

Cars jammies!

Kaden has been getting braver every single day with his “cruising” around on the furniture. He has taken to hanging from the entertainment center… safe, huh? I keep feeling like he is bound to walk soon, I guess we will see.



So, try as I might, I cannot seem to find chicken stock here. We shop at a store called LuLu’s Hypermarket (don’t let the “hyper” part fool, it is just a grocery store). I like it because it is right across the street from our house, so we don’t have to go far. With the traffic here, that is always a plus. The problem is, they don’t have a lot of “American” items. Most of it I have gotten over and have just learned to alter my preferred tastes or just eat new or different things. But I keep running into recipes that call for chicken broth or stock. Sooo, I decided to apply my domestic genius and make it myself! Below is a picture of my fabulous stock, ready to be cooked. It turned out so much better than I would have hoped! Even though it takes hours to make, with the wonderful smell making you feel starving the whole time, it was definitely worth it. I got about 2 quarts worth of stock.

So last night, using the cooked veggies (I cut them up) from the stock and some chicken pieces, and of course, a few cups of the stock, I made a chicken and dumplings soup-ish-stew thing! Haha It was supposed to be soup with dumplings in it, but then it got pretty thick and chowder-like. It tasted like my Mom’s “chicken pastry” that I ate so much as a kid, just with pieces of carrots, onion, and celery in it. It was fabulous!

As I mentioned in my last post, Stu started Brazilian Jui-Jitsu. Here is my handsome man with his gi. Isn’t he a stud muffin??? Kaden and I went to practice with him again last night and he is actually a lot better than I would have guessed against these guys who have been doing this a LOT longer. We had learned a lot in Boise it turns out. It is a blast for me to watch them fight though. I am way more into the research and observation end of the sport, and then it is something we can talk about technically and both understand in different ways. So yay.

Stu in his gi.

Here is a closer shot so you can see the patches.

Anywho, that’s about it for me today. I just did 175 jumping jacks and I feel like I’m going to pass out! I think Kaden and I will go have lunch now.

Kaden helping Mommy sing "Baa baa black sheep".